SAN RAMON, California (AP) – Some who mailed holiday gifts weeks earlier this year found they didn’t act early enough as Christmas arrived with gifts stuck in transit.
The US Postal Service said on its website that it was “facing unprecedented volume increases and limited employee availability due to the impact of COVID-19”.
Austin Race of Grand Rapids, Michigan, placed an online order on November 30 for a die-cast collection model of a NASCAR race car. It did not reach his father after the postal service passed through his neighborhood on Thursday night, even though he was informed on December 8 that he had been sent by priority mail for two days.
His gift was in Opa-locka, Florida, the last time he checked the tracking number, about 1,200 miles south of where he ordered it in Mooresville, North Carolina. Race, 21, resigned himself to telling his father that he would have to wait a little longer for his gift.
“I understand the situation, but it’s still frustrating,” he said.
Joanna Goldstein ordered Christmas ornaments online on November 17 for her 10-year-old son’s football coach and her son’s friend. She realized it was time to arrive from a store about 128 miles from her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
All appeared well on December 11 when he received a notification from the postal service that the ornaments had been received in Columbus, Ohio.
But the package made a trip through distribution centers in Warrendale, Pennsylvania, Grand Rapids, Michigan and Lansing, Michigan, before apparently crashing into Detroit.
On Wednesday, he received another notification that delivery would be later than originally anticipated. Her son was upset, but Goldstein took a step back.
“I was frustrated last week thinking, ‘Come on, get here,’ but now I’m just laughing,” she said.
She told her son that the ornaments would hang from the tree next year and would tell a story about the long journey they had made during the pandemic.